Lab Members

Postdoctoral Scholars

Silvia Keppler

Dr. Silvia Keppler received a PhD from the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham (UK). She visited academia and industry around the world to gain experience in process and food engineering. Silvia is currently working on a variety of projects including the following: i) Degradation of phytometabolites of antibiotics during in vitro digestion; ii) Characterization of individual particle movement during in vitro gastric digestion in the Human Gastric Simulator (HGS); iii) Optimization of raft-forming drug formulations.

Graduate Students

Yamile Mennah

Yamile is a PhD candidate in Biological Systems Engineering researching the influence of food properties on physical and chemical breakdown during in vitro digestion. Her research objective is to determine the influence of food buffering capacity on food breakdown, gastric secretions, and meal gastric emptying using a dynamic in vitro digestion model.

Clay Swackhamer

Clay is a PhD student in Biological Systems Engineering. He is studying structural breakdown and nutrient release from solid foods during simulated human digestion. One model for human digestion that Clay is using is the human gastric simulator, a device available only at UC Davis that recreates the peristaltic contractions in the stomach using mechanical rollers. His current work applies fracture mechanics to understand the mechanical properties that control food structural breakdown, and uses tools such as image analysis and texture analysis to experimentally measure these processes in the lab.

Alex Olenskyj

Alex is a PhD student applying 4-dimensional imaging coupled with machine learning approaches to in vitro gastric digestion for the purpose of visualization, quantification, and prediction of food structural changes during the digestion process.

Berta Lascuevas

Berta is a Master’s student in Biological Systems Engineering. She is investigating the food structure modifications during processing to control starch digestibility in carbohydrate-based snack products.

Visiting Scholars

Natalia Cuba

Undergraduate Students

Arash Afsarifard

Arash is an undergraduate student in Biosystems Engineering. He is studying a dynamic model of gastric digestion, specifically on almond milk. The goal is to provide a more realistic representation of digestion for in vitro studies.

Kia Canning

Riley Graham

Riley Graham is an undergraduate student in food science studying various digestion properties of fruits.